Fission Yeast as a Platform for Antibacterial Drug Screens Targeting Bacterial Cytoskeleton Proteins

Bacterial cytoskeletal proteins such as FtsZ and MreB perform essential functions such as cell division and cell shape maintenance. Further, FtsZ and MreB have emerged as important targets for novel antimicrobial discovery. Several assays have been developed to identify compounds targeting nucleotide binding and polymerization of these cytoskeletal proteins, primarily focused on FtsZ. Moreover, many of the assays are either laborious or cost-intensive, and ascertaining whether these proteins are the cellular target of the drug often requires multiple methods. Finally, the toxicity of the drugs to eukaryotic cells also poses a problem. Here, we describe a single-step cell-based assay to discover novel molecules targeting bacterial cytoskeleton and minimize hits that might be potentially toxic to eukaryotic cells. Fission yeast is amenable to high-throughput screens based on microscopy, and a visual screen can easily identify any molecule that alters the polymerization of FtsZ or MreB. Our assay utilizes the standard 96-well plate and relies on the ability of the bacterial cytoskeletal proteins to polymerize in a eukaryotic cell such as the fission yeast. While the protocols described here are for fission yeast and utilize FtsZ from Staphylococcus aureus and MreB from Escherichia coli, they are easily adaptable to other bacterial cytoskeletal proteins that readily assemble into polymers in any eukaryotic expression hosts. The method described here should help facilitate further discovery of novel antimicrobials targeting bacterial cytoskeletal proteins.